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Explores what it was like to be a practitioner of Pyrrhonist skepticism, and to what extent anything like it might be feasible today. The book examines the Pyrrhonists' manner of self-presentation, their argumentative procedures as applied to specific topics, and what it meant in practice to live as a Pyrrhonist.
List of contents
Part I. How the Pyrrhonists Present Themselves: 1. The Pyrrhonist's dilemma: what to write if you have nothing to say; 2. Why care whether scepticism is different from other philosophies?; 3. Humor as philosophical subversion, especially in the sceptics; Part II. Pyrrhonists at Work: Specific Topics: 4. The sign in the Pyrrhonian tradition; 5. Aenesidemus the anti-physicist; 6. The modes in Sextus: theory and practice; Part III. Life as a Pyrrhonist: 7. What kind of self can a Greek sceptic have?; 8. How ethical can an ancient sceptic be?; 9. Living as a sceptic; Part IV. Intersections of Pyrrhonism with Contemporary Thought: 10. Can an ancient Greek sceptic be Eudaimôn (or happy)? And what difference does the answer make to us? 11. On Pyrrhonism, stances, and believing what you want; 12. Can we be ancient sceptics?
About the author
Richard Bett is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at The Johns Hopkins University. His translations of works by Sextus Empiricus include Sextus Empiricus: Against the Logicians (Cambridge, 2005) and Sextus Empiricus: Against the Physicists (Cambridge, 2012), and he is also the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism (Cambridge, 2010).
Summary
Explores what it was like to be a practitioner of Pyrrhonist skepticism, and to what extent anything like it might be feasible today. The book examines the Pyrrhonists' manner of self-presentation, their argumentative procedures as applied to specific topics, and what it meant in practice to live as a Pyrrhonist.
